Adorno and Existence

by Gordon

From the beginning to the end of his career, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno sustained an uneasy but enduring bond with existentialism. His attitude overall was that of unsparing criticism, verging on polemic. In Kierkegaard he saw an early paragon for the late flowering of bourgeois solipsism; in Heidegger, an impresario for a “jargon of authenticity” cloaking its idealism in an aura of pseudo-concreteness and neo-romantic kitsch. Even in the straitened rationalism of Husserl’s phenomenology Adorno saw a vain attempt to break free from the prison-house of consciousness.

“Gordon, in a detailed, sensitive, fair-minded way, leads the reader through Adorno’s various, usually quite vigorous, rhetorically pointed attacks on both transcendental and existential phenomenology from 1930 on…[A] singularly illuminating study.”
―Robert Pippin, Critical Inquiry

“Gordon’s book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Adorno’s thought. He writes with expertise, authority, and compendious scholarship, moving with confidence across the thinkers he examines…After this book, it will not be possible to explain Adorno’s philosophical development without serious consideration of [Gordon’s] reactions to them.”
―Richard Westerman, Symposium

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2018

Reviews

[Zoonanism · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Gordon presents a fine analysis of themes which structure Adorno's engagement with the nasty idealists (Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger). The overriding theme is the following : the Bourgeois interior is a nasty cabinet of tendencies for domination and avoidance of the "object".

Yet it's not clear after such convenient labeling and "immanent critique", what Adorno's reason and insight will perform instead. Yes phenomenology is a redundant and circular enterprise. It's not hard though to imagine that besides the bourgeois, brahmins and untouchables too may indulge in conceptual autarky. By the end it does get a bit tiring when having forced oneself to follow Adorno's convoluted syntax one finds little more than an accusation repeated over and over.

[Echo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear and thorough guide to Adorno's critique of existentialism. Very helpful in laying out Adorno's arguments across minor works as well as major.